Colombia. Alai Secure met in the city of Bogotá, at the end of last month, the main providers of solutions and push to talk terminals in the country, with whom they analyzed the situation of the sector, as well as the opportunities that the arrival of 5G will bring.
Said meeting, organized by Alai Secure in collaboration with Macrochip Ltda, took place last Tuesday, April 25, at the Hilton Hotel in the city of Bogotá. Space where a conference was organized that included a breakfast space, words from the representatives of both organizing companies, as well as the presentation "5G private networks for critical mission services".
Carlos Valenciano, general manager of Alai Secure, opened the conference by pointing out how “the POC service -push to talk over cellular- has been an indisputable part of the Internet of Things ecosystem from the beginning. The rate of adaptation of push to talk technologies in Colombia has been one of the most outstanding in the region and will undoubtedly be one of the main use cases of 5G”.
Next, Ricardo Orjuela, Alai Secure's regional sales manager for Latam, analyzed some of the main challenges in the push to talk sector, such as coverage, the need to manage the fleet of simcards, technical support, and emphasized how the offer of Alai Secure has been designed to meet this demand, with a service in Colombia supported by the Tigo and Movistar mobile networks.
"Our Self-management platform with its new dashboard, much friendlier and more intuitive, allows our clients to have the necessary autonomy and independence in the management of the entire service life cycle: simcard activations, status control, control of consumption, billing control, detail of lines, views of subscriptions... Our clients will be able, from the same platform, to report an incident and follow up through their ticketing system”, concluded Orjuela.
In addition, the conference also included the intervention of Andrea Hernández, Macrochip's business development manager, who highlighted some key characteristics that a machine-to-machine communications solution for a POC service must have, such as lower data consumption and the ability to Universal configuration with any type of PTT equipment.
"Our experience with the Alai Secure SIM has allowed us to save up to 50% in data consumption and this is very important if we want to grow."
5G private networks for mission-critical services
Rafael Escobar, M2M/IoT channel manager at Alai Secure, delivered the presentation. The manager began his speech by pointing out the significant delay in the deployment of 5G technology in Colombia, since the standard was approved back in 2016, due in part, according to the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications of Colombia (MINTIC ) and the mobile network operators themselves, due to the fact that there are still some challenges in connectivity and penetration pending closure of 4G.
Later he pointed out that "everything indicates that 2023 will be the year in which the beginning of the definitive deployment of 5G takes place."
Escobar also pointed out the difference between what has come to be called selective 5G deployments and the so-called massive 5G deployments -typical of the consumer world-. “Network slicing technology allows you to create 5G private networks within the same operator network and define the quality of service parameters: speed, latency, security, number of devices, among others. A private environment and away from the massive 5G deployment. This technology allows companies, corporations, public institutions and the world of industry to have their own, private and customized 5G environments”.
